Encyclopedias

“Sunday was a name given by the heathens to the first day of the week, because it was the day on which they worshipped the sun, … the seventh day was blessed and hallowed by God Himself, and … He requires His creatures to keep it holy to Him. This commandment is of universal and perpetual obligation. … The Creator ‘blessed the seventh day’ declared it to be a day above all days, a day on which His favor should assuredly rest. … So long, then, as man exists, and the world around him endures, does the law of the early Sabbath remain. It cannot be set aside, so long as its foundations last…. It is not the Jewish Sabbath, properly so-called, which is ordained in the fourth commandment. In the whole of that injunction there is no Jewish element, any more than there is in the third commandment, or the sixth.”  Eadie’s Biblical Cyclopedia, 1872 Edition, page 561.  

“Thus we learn from Socrates (HE., vi.c.8) that in his time public worship was held in the churches of Constantinople on both days. The view that the Christian’s Lord’s day or Sunday is but the Christian Sabbath deliberately transferred, from the seventh to the first day of the week does not indeed, find categorical expression till a much later period…. The earliest recognition of the observance of Sunday as a legal duty is a constitution of Constantine in A.D. 32l, enacting that all courts of justice, inhabitants of towns, and workshops were to be at rest on. Sunday (venerabili die Solis), with an exception in favor of those engaged in agricultural labor…. The Council of Laodicea (363) …,forbids Christians from Judaizing and resting on the Sabbath day. preferring the Lord’s day, and so far as possible resting as Christians. ” Encyclopedia Britannica l899 Edition, Vol. XXIII, page 654.  

“Unquestionably the first law, either ecclesiastical or civil, by which the sabbatical observance of Sunday is known to have been ordained is the sabbatical edict of Constantine, A.D. 321. Chambers’ Encyclopedia, Article “Sunday.  

“It must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning the, first day. ”  M’CLINTOCK AND STRONG Cyclopedia of Biblical, Thedogical, and Ecclesiastical literature, Vol. IX page 196.  

“Sunday (Dies Sotis, of the Roman calendar, ‘day of the sun,’ because dedicated to the sun), the, first day of the week, was adopted by the early Christians as a day of worship. The ‘sun’ of Latin adoration they interpreted as the ‘Sun of Righteousness.’… No regulations, for its observance are laid down in the New Testament, nor, indeed, is its observance even enjoined. ”  .SCHAFF HERZOG, Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 1891 Edition, Vol. IV, Art. “Sunday.”